Wednesday, July 22, 2015

“I want to talk to you about a stone. From a certain perspective, it is just a stone.
For my purposes, it doesn't matter whether it's marble, granite, or the most
common of stones, although you have to admit that the fact that it's white and smooth
grants it a touch of splendor I know not how to oppose. In any case, it's still
a stone.

If I planned a
quick, albeit detailed, journey through every museum, exhibition hall, private
collection, ruin, and art gallery in the planet, I know for certain that I would
not find a piece like the one I'll mention to you. I don't know why the most
prestigious museum in the most prestigious city would have placed it in the
best of its corners, the one linking together what are likely to be its two
main wings but that, in any case, is that – a corner, a hallway. I will also disregard
these details.

The piece, with
its more than 2,200 years, represents a woman; a woman dressed in the Greek
style of the times, that is, with a wet-looking tunic covering her body down to
her feet, while about her naked arms there's little we can tell because they've
been torn. A pair of wings sprout from her back that maintain their exultant
course, although they also show damage. Another blow has done away with the
entire head, leaving us, strange as it might sound to you, not with an acrid
taste of decapitation but with a taste of mystery.

The name of the
piece – the Victory of Samothrace – alludes to the celebration of a deed of war
in ancient Greece. For my purposes, this is as irrelevant as whether or not it's
made of marble, because what beckons us is neither the texture of the stone nor
the event it celebrates. What beckons us is the head and the arms that have
vanished, that have been crumbled by the centuries and are now part of the wind,
of the sand that goes from here to there, far and wide across the Earth.

What would be
the exact position of the arms? Would they be raised in a joyful attitude or
rather follow the general movement of the body at its sides? Would one of the
hands indicate a spot with the gesture of someone who is making an appeal,
signaling? We can no longer tell; what is left at the level of the shoulders
doesn't provide enough information. That's why it's impossible to know her
exact shape – the beauty, the cold serenity, the joy or the asperity of the
lost totality.

No detail would
make us think that the sculptor would have endowed this female image with the
head of a monster, of a Gorgon, or of any other horrible creature, and every possibility
– according to what we see in other pieces of that period – speaks of a
beautiful woman. Against this, against all probability of balanced features, I assert
the monster. Yet not a monster of abject traits but one that lacks a face for
the simple reason that it can't have it, although in its presence we can't help
thinking about it and hence can't help seeing it.

Perhaps, rather
than a defect proper, what I'm talking about is a certain quality of the
invisible, of the unapproachable; what is not there but is there. This would
mean that the stone is alive, and not simply in the flat, dour manner of
symbols or gestures; let's say, her right leg shows the attitude of moving
forward while the left one waits its turn, slightly bent, to follow suit. This
mobility of both legs is transmitted to the entire body, which is impetuous all
at once, ready all of a sudden to make use of its two wings stretched for
flying. I can't tell in what moment of this reality or unreality she's already
flying or getting ready to do so. I don't know how dense is the material of
which she was made, but suddenly in the blink of an eye there's only movement.

This lovely
movement, however, is not the core of the beauty I'm discussing here, even
though it's obvious that it endlessly contributes to such beauty. The face, the
head we don't know and see without seeing is closer to the nature I'm describing
to you. Its illusion, its infinite potential remains untouchable, and I can't
tell you anything else about it.

In its entirety,
the monster or the entity I have perceived so far is Hope. Motionless, in fact,
painfully and unassailably still and, at the same time, full of all the
strength and yearning and austerity and ambition and defeat of each desire,
which for this very reason constitute its entire accomplishment. I don't know
the composition of this piece of arid, tense matter, but I do know something of
its implausible loyalty, of the power of its outburst against the stillness
that was inexorably imposed on it, of its impossible and hence palpable
victory, visible in those feet that go forward, those majestically stretched
wings... Where is Hope going, you'll say to me, where with its primordial,
blind, and lost instinct? That's what the invisible head or arms can no longer
tell us, but this very thing, all this happy defeat fixed in the most visible
corner of the largest museum on Earth, is what denotes the magnitude of Hope.
That's all.

Retrieved from the blog Dos Disparos. You can read an interview with CM in Spanish here.

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